Southampton’s Green City Charter is offering a new vision for a sustainable city.
Last year, in what may now feel like a different, distant world, Southampton mapped out a new path towards a more sustainable city. The council’s Green City Charter set out ways to make Southampton “a better place for present and future generations that is prepared for the challenges presented by climate change” – or, in the words of Pete Boustred, the council’s head of green city and infrastructure, “cleaner, greener and healthier”.
The charter centred on five themes: improvements in sustainable energy and carbon reduction; cleaner air; biodiversity; better management of waste, recycling and water; and sustainable travel.
Now, with the coronavirus crisis an unexpected spanner in the works for many councils and city leaders, Boustred and colleagues are pushing to ensure that the fledgling initiative maintains momentum even as other near-term challenges emerge. And Boustred wants people and businesses right across the city to back it.
“The charter is, from a Southampton perspective, to show our commitment over the next 10 years, but also really to bring the wider community together – the residents and businesses and other organisations across the city – so we can all be part of a cultural shift, in terms of supporting that sustainable agenda,” he says.
Real estate has a crucial role to play, Boustred adds. “We need real estate and development across the city to think about the future – making sure that those developments are sustainable in terms of supporting renewable energies, but also making sure they are energy-efficient,” he says.
“It’s really important that we start to make sure that developments are looking at the latest technologies, making sure we can work with those developments so they come forward in a sustainable way and making sure that those developments are green and attractive – places that people want to live in the heart of the city centre as well.”
We need real estate and development across the city to think about the future – making sure that those developments are sustainable
Pete Boustred, Southampton City Council
Shifting behaviours
That is exactly the approach that Amanda Reynolds and her colleagues at AR Urbanism want to take with their work on the Mayflower Quarter redevelopment. The consultancy was appointed by the council to work on the project at the start of the year, and a masterplan for the 84-hectare site, which stretches from the railway station to the waterfront, will be drawn up by the end of the year.
Reynolds, a director at AR Urbanism, wants the regenerated area to help promote the idea of a 15-minute city centre for Southampton, encouraging active travel and a more sustainable built environment and infrastructure. “We absolutely support the Green City Charter, and we think it’s fantastic that Southampton is proactively incorporating all these ideas and is able to focus them on proposals for the Mayflower Quarter, which is currently very car-oriented.”
She continues: “We are designing a mixed-use, sustainable piece of the city centre, which will include residential and a lot of business location opportunities. It absolutely will include connected green spaces, particularly the connection between the railway and the waterfront.”
What it will not include is any way of crossing the site from one side to the other by car. “Car ownership will be discouraged, though we recognise that this is all going to take time – the shift in behaviour patterns is really important,” Reynolds says.
Local businesses and employers too have bought into Southampton’s green vision. At Meachers Global Logistics, commercial director Gary Whittle applauds the council for initiatives such as a freight consolidation centre set up five years ago, which limits the number of vehicles on the city’s roads.
“What we’ve managed to do is get business and the public sector collaborating,” Whittle says. “Southampton City Council reached out to businesses like [Meachers] and others and asked our opinions. That’s not the first time that has happened, but it’s the first time I’ve actually known anybody act on what they’re being told by business. As a born-and-bred Sotonian, why would I not want to improve the region?”
We want a vibrant city from a business perspective, but you want to get that balance right with the city also being a nice place to live. And I think there’s a recognition that you can actually have both
Gary Whittle, Meachers Global Logistics
Walking a fine line
Boustred wants the charter to generate a “cultural shift” – to give companies and city residents “a focal point to have these discussions… on the green agenda”.
Early wins have included a cleaner fleet of city buses, the development of wild-flower meadows around the city (it now has 12) and work towards a target of doubling tree planting in Southampton.
Will Covid-19 alter – or reinforce – the green agenda for real estate markets and cities such as Southampton? Reynolds believes so. “It’s brought us an opportunity to reinforce the cleaner, greener approach to life,” she says of the pandemic. “It has made us look at how it’s going to impact our lives more generally, but [how we can] keep supporting moves towards sustainable urban development.”
For Meachers’ Whittle, the coronavirus pandemic has introduced “an expectation of change”. When the freight consolidation plan was first mooted, he adds, some in Southampton questioned whether it was needed – “It wasn’t perceived that there was enough justification to change the supply chain because why bother if it’s not broke?”.
But increasingly, he says, the old ways of doing business – indeed, of living – are up for debate. “What’s clear is that people are now willing to have a look at things and rethink the way they operate.”
As they do, Whittle says, a city such as Southampton will start to look different. But to succeed, that new vision must meet the needs of businesses and residents alike.
“We want a vibrant city from a business perspective. That’s what’s going to attract new investment, inward investment,” Whittle says. “But you want to get that balance right with the city also being a nice place to live. And I think there’s a recognition that you can actually have both – they’re not uniquely separate. And what the council is trying to do with the Green City Charter is to just walk that very fine line.”
SEE ALSO: ‘We’ll go back to something better’: Southampton prepares for its next normal
WATCH: Click here to view the panel sessions from EG’s Future of Southampton event
The panel
The Future of Southampton virtual event took place on 17 September. The panel for session 2, “A greener, cleaner future”, comprised:
- Pete Boustred, divisional head of green city and infrastructure, Southampton City Council
- Amanda Reynolds, director, AR Urbanism
- Gary Whittle, commercial director, Meachers Global Logistics
- Chair: Tim Burke, deputy editor, EG
To send feedback, e-mail tim.burke@egi.co.uk or tweet @_tim_burke or @estatesgazette
